


The Fish

by beerecordings



Category: jacksepticeye egos - Fandom
Genre: Alcoholism, Author used. so many metaphors. Bee why, But Henrik's very stuck in his head right now, It's all metaphorical no one is literally a fish or a bird or anything, Jamie's still trying to recover from being Anti's, Trauma and abuse recovery mentioned, Trying to remember how to be a family, everyone is stressed, some blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25474180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beerecordings/pseuds/beerecordings
Summary: Written in my experimental style, a short, descriptive piece about Henrik losing his job. His family seems to be in shambles and they're all trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and swim back towards each other in the great dark ocean in which Henrik finds himself drowning. Jackie and Marvin struggle to stop fighting. Chase has too much to drink. JJ just wants to carve chocolate octopi and get snuggly.
Relationships: Henrik & all his brothers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	The Fish

**Author's Note:**

> This is a funky little piece with a lot of metaphors I wrote when I was probably too deep into my Writing Fiction class hahaha. I hope you like it. Very family-centered. Originally posted on my tumblr under the same username.

He’s a fish in pollution, pushing up the sand with his snout.

“Hi, honey,” calls Jackie from the kitchen. He only uses pet names when he’s upset.

“Hi,” he answers softly, closing the door behind him.

He’s a fish with big, ugly golden eyes, the little black pinpricks frozen in amber, surveying the murky water around it with its stupid fish mouth hanging open like a dead thing.

“How was work?”

“Fine.”

“Good, good… you work so hard, I’m proud of you, doc…”

He’s a fish and it’s heavy and hard to swim. He hears Jackie playing with some papers through the water pressing down on him.

“What is it today, Jackie?”

“Hm? Oh, this – don’t worry about this, sweetie, I’ve got it handled… I’ll just… just need to… I’ve got it handled, yeah…”

He drifts away again, deep enough in his head that he doesn’t look up when Henrik comes to stand beside him in the kitchen, staring at him. He’s a fish, sure, but Jackie is just a bird who can’t find somewhere to land. He’s been flying for months. His wings must ache. Henrik touches his back and presses the pad of his thumb against the knuckles of Jackie’s spine, hard, just for a moment. Jackie doesn’t notice. His blue bird’s eyes are far-sighted and he can only see parts of the documents in front of him, something about Jameson’s therapy or the rent or police reports on strange glitches in the government computer system two countries over.

“Jackie,” says Henrik softly.

But Jackie doesn’t hear him, cause nobody’s listening to the way that fish bubble and pant when they can’t find anything they need in the reeds, and the tide keeps dragging hiding places farther and farther away. The water’s getting lower and damn but the sun burns a painful glow against his scales through the clear, loveless waves. But Jackie is just an albatross, and they’re not swimming in the same tides anymore. His brother rocks on unsteady winds, his feathers ruffled and oil-heavy and his muscles straining, catching glimpses of Henrik in the silver water below, unable to help him til he finds somewhere to land, and Jackie can never find anywhere to land these days. Jackie can never, never, never find anywhere to put his head down and rest these days. Albatrosses don’t have it much easier than the fish the sailors scoop up. Sometimes the sailors shoot them down too, and then, in fear of bad luck, the other sailors take the dead body of the bird and tie it around the killer’s throat, so he gets nothing to drink but the blood of the albatross around his neck for days and days and days, but at least the bird is sleeping then. It’s an old legend. Jackie is just rocking above it. He wouldn’t be able to stop anybody from shooting him down. He wouldn’t be able to stop anybody from scooping Henrik up. He probably wouldn’t even notice, and that would only make the wind harsher, and the bird would find a way to cry even though birds don’t really do that. This one does.

“Work so hard,” he repeats lovingly, still not looking up, still barely noticing that Henrik is beside him. There’s a line of pale sweat along his hair. “I do love you, Schneep, I’m so proud… glad you’re doing better these days, little brother, little brother…”

Henrik fills up a glass of water and puts it beside his hand before heading up the stairs. Jackie hunches over the paper in the kitchen. The lights aren’t on and he can’t find his glasses.

“Hey,” Henrik whispers, peering into Chase’s room. “You awake?”

Chase jolts up on his bed, hair everywhere. “Hey? I’m awake, I’m awake!”

Henrik chuckles. “I can see that.”

“Aw, Schneep, it’s so early! Eight A.M.? Ahhh, you woke me up…”

Henrik’s chest rumbles merrily and he jumps onto Chase’s mattress to make it bounce, drawing a low groan of protest out of his little brother.

“What, what?” teases Schneep, getting up to press Chase back into the bed, digging his fingers into his ribs. “Dumb-ass, were you sleeping?”

Chase laughs and pushes him off the bed, dumping Henrik onto his ass.

“So mean! Asshole, I was up til four editing!”

“You’re nocturnal,” says Henrik, shoving his feet away from him as they come to hang off the bed. “Raccoon man.”

Chase grins slowly at him, his mischief mouth filling up with the joy of it, and Henrik is grateful for him. A shiver runs down his whole body as comforting fingers come down to massage at the back of his throat, warm and reassuring. Long raccoon claws stroke across Henrik’s flesh without judgment or fear. Chase is a scavenger, it’s true, and nothing scares or disgusts him anymore. He’s been in the garbage himself enough times to shrug all the bullshit off. What’s the smell of sterile hospital bandages and blood to a raccoon? Forget about it and share whatever comfort you can find with me. The smell of sweaty sleep clings to him. Chase tugs teasingly at his hair and then lets him go, sliding to the ground beside him.

“Did you wake me up for something?”

Henrik stares at him, wondering if he’d even hear if he said something.

“Schneep? Hard day at work?”

“Just a little,” he answers. “But I just wanted to see if you knew where Jamie was. He’s not in his room.”

“Think he fell asleep in my closet again, yeah. Poor little buddy all frantic last night. Just needed a place to hide.”

Chase’s tiny walk-in is stuffed with pillows and blankets and toys these days. Henrik gets up and opens the door gently. The wood finds tucked-in legs quickly and Henrik tries to slip into the closet without waking his little brother too abruptly, but the slightest change in environment has awoken every one of Jameson’s fine senses, and his eyes flash open, glittering in the darkness. He leaps to his knees and curls back against the wall of the closet, swirling into himself, clutching his knife in one hand and his sock puppet in the other. Chase’s daughter gave it to him because she said she didn’t like it anymore, but Uncle Jameson might. She had said this as she sat down abruptly in his lap, and Jameson had flinched so hard Chase shouted, sure that Izzy was about to be slapped or shoved off. Jameson had just gone stiff and allowed his niece to slump back cheerfully against his chest. Chase heaved this huge sigh of relief and come over to pat Jameson’s head, and Izzy had held his scarred white hands and pressed the sock puppet into them, and Jameson accepted it.

Jameson growls an exhale of air at him, one of the two warning noises he’s capable of making. Henrik holds his hands out and crouches gently down to his level, murmuring his name. Jameson relaxes. He’s smart and he knows a friendly face even when he’s spooked. Henrik reaches out to brush his fingers through the long hair growing towards the back of his neck and Jameson sighs, closing his eyes, letting his head drift back against his hand.

“Poor tired bud,” says Henrik.

“He was playing all violent with his toys again,” reports Chase dutifully, getting up and grabbing the first shirt he sees from above Henrik’s head, stripping his sleep shirt off and changing right there, heading back towards his drawers for boxers and pants. “Trying to tear that one stuffed cat up. He hates the fucking thing but he’ll never let me take it from him.”

Jamie whines wearily and goes pawing for the cat in the darkness, reaching around until Henrik finds it and presses it into his hand. He’s lived most of his life the way that fighting dogs do, tied up and beat til it made him violent and agonized, and even now he has to have something to bite. He doesn’t mean to. He just gets upset. He bit Marvin once, dog’s teeth digging into venison. The shock on his face was almost funny, but the despair in Jameson’s was not.

Jameson buries his face in the cat stuffy and huffs distressed air out, pulling at his clothes. The small box of the closet is a comforting cage but he never feels safe.

“It’s okay, puppy,” soothes Chase.

“Don’t call him that,” snaps Henrik.

“Well, it calms him down.”

“I don’t care, you’re not Anti, don’t call him puppy.”

“Is everything okay, Schneep?”

He’s just a fish. His big mouth gapes open. He’s stupid and ugly and he can’t breathe air.

“Fine,” he says, and pulls Jameson in for a hug. Jamie whimpers again and puts his chin down on his shoulder. His teeth are very close to Henrik’s face, but he knows that he won’t bite. He’s trying his best. Dogs shouldn’t be treated the way he was treated, people even less so. Raccoon fingers come to stroke at the back of Jameson’s head. They are a warm mismatched family in the darkness. Jameson’s back gets wet with tears, but he doesn’t say anything about it, and Chase, no matter how well his eyes see in the dark, does not notice.

“I lost my job,” says Henrik three days later at the kitchen table.

An abrupt silence pierces the table the same way his knife is piercing chicken cordon bleu. Fish, as it turns out, will eat just about anything. He saws at his chicken, his pinprick eyes fascinated by the thin yellow flesh sliding off it as he tears.

He sticks a piece of chicken in his mouth and chews.

“At the hospital?” asks Jackie. “You lost your job at the hospital? With Nadia, with the boss that you liked?”

“She’s the hospital coordinator,” says Henrik.

“But it wasn’t her decision.” Jackie’s talons are grasping at straws. Henrik’s surprised he’s even managed to get this close to the water where he’s swimming. He feels the little silver fish turn its golden eyes up to see the bird, but it’s barely staying in the air and its presence is no longer comforting like it once was. He wonders if one day the albatross will just crash into the water with him, and he’ll be the one trying to keep its head up while it drowns. “She wouldn’t do that to you. She’s the one who worked with you. Let you have two whole months to have a break, go to therapy… she wouldn’t do that to you.”

“She did what she felt she had to,” says Henrik softly. “I’m a liability.”

“Hold everything, slow down, slow down,” demands Marvin beside him, and he feels his big brother’s hand come to press down on his thigh, squeezing to make sure he’s still there, in one piece, beside him. “Schneep, tell us what happened.”

Henrik glances over shyly. Marvin’s eyes used to be blue, but these days Henrik thinks they’re a deep, dopey brown, warm but shy, prey’s eyes. Always trying to figure everything out, all careful, all timid, trying to find all the answers to make anything make sense to him anymore. But nothing ever does, so Marvin keeps hiding in the trees. The cat mask is a joke and Henrik knows it. Marvin is a deer.

“They can’t just fire you!” spits Chase, furious on the other side of the table, his face turning red with grief. Henrik imagines grey and black fur all puffed up. “That’s discrimination because of your disability! It’s illegal!”

“I can’t do my job anymore.” Henrik shrugs his shoulders. Shakes his head. He can’t cry over it anymore. The last three days have had too many tears already. “My hands… most surgeons are done by the time they’re forty, fifty, maybe. I just took an extra ten years early. Anti took an extra ten years early.”

Everyone is staring at him. Everyone is staring at the gaps in his scales. Everyone is staring at the fish-hook jammed down his throat. Everyone is staring at his shaking fins. He wants to be sick. Can fish vomit?

“You had a bad episode or something at work?” asks Marvin frailly. Yeah, that’s a deer, a deer sitting next to him, using its hooves to pick at its food. The image almost makes him laugh in Marvin’s elongated face. Henrik thinks he used to be something else, maybe a lion or a bird of paradise, but these days – nah, Henrik can see the spots along his legs and the antlers, getting loose the closer winter gets. His brother is a deer these days and he just wants to run away to the forest and hide for the rest of his life. He hasn’t touched his chicken, just nibbled at the carrots Chase cooked to go along with them.

“Yeah,” says Henrik. “Yeah. In the middle of a surgery. Open heart. The blood all turned so much redder than it had been… and I was just a fish in the Nile when the water changed, you know, I was just… couldn’t take it all of a sudden. Took my instruments right out of the body and tore my mask off and threw up in the trash can. All the nurses looking at me. Sick of dealing with my breakdowns. They called another doctor up at four in the morning and he came in and finished it. Then Nadia takes me back to her office… not even sorry, you know, put on her tough coordinator act, or maybe it wasn’t an act, and she was sick of me too… They gave me a fair chance. All the accommodations they could. Let me have my nice long break. I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t. I’m not a doctor now.”

He is getting up from the table before he’s registered his own actions, his eyes burning. Chase is talking too loud about how she can’t do that, you love your job, you’re so good at what you do, and Marvin is reaching out for his hand like he’s offering half of his sugar cube to bring him to sit back down, while Jackie just stares at his plate, far-sighted, far-sighted and lost. Henrik tears away from Marvin’s fingers and swims towards the stairs, panting water and blood, exhausted, distressed, pushed endlessly back by the waves. He hears the small chirping barks of Jameson clicking his tongue after him and he’s grateful that the little one is, for once, clear-headed, but he isn’t about to turn around. Too many eyes. Too many eyes and too many open bodies, and he’s just a fish, a fish swimming up against the tide, and soon he’ll be a dead fish, cause even though his therapist tells him shortened life outlook is a symptom of his PTSD, he’s felt enough lives drain away beneath his hands to sense when sailors are opening up their nets, and there’s nobody left in the water beside him. Just deer and raccoons trying to stay in the shade on the shore, and birds too exhausted to keep flying, lost above the water.

And one lone pitbull swimming out into the ocean after him.

He wakes up that night to movement in his bed.

“Drunk again?” he mumbles. “What?”

Someone blows air on his face.

Henrik startles, pushing at the body above his own, shoving its shoulders away. “Chase! Oh.”

It’s not Chase. Jamie rubs at his slim shoulders in mock protest, screwing up his face all sweet and offended.

“Ow, ow,” whine his hands, and he flops dramatically back onto the bed. “Mean doctor.”

Henrik snorts despite himself and shoves him with his foot before getting up to crawl over him. “Little terror,” he signs back, grabbing his hands and pulling him sitting up. He fits Jameson’s chin in his hands and tilts his face from side-to-side. Jameson, all too used to examinations, lets himself be turned about, gazing at the ceiling.

“Your color’s up a little. Feeling clear tonight, then?”

“Feel quite alright. Back and forth a little. Ping pong ball.”

Henrik chuckles, putting a hand on his own forehead as he feels the exhaustion swimming back towards him. He sinks back against his headboard, drawing his blankets around him.

“You scared me jumping on me like that,” mumbles Henrik, reaching out to touch his arm. He’s maybe a black and white pittie, Henrik thinks. Nice dogs, really. Just got a bad reputation. Just got used for bad things. Nice blue eyes. Clever, friendly breed, a lot smarter than fish, and a lot tougher, too. Henrik halfway expects Jameson to dart forward and lick his face. They’d have to have another conversation about boundaries. Maybe if Henrik used German Jamie would understand him better.

His little brother breathes out a happy little sigh and flops onto the bed beside him, clutching Marvin’s laptop to his chest as he gets comfortable.

“Well, make yourself at home,” grumbles Henrik, trying not to be endeared. “Little terror. What are you doing, anyway? I thought you’d been sleeping in Chase’s closet.”

Jameson’s mouth turns down. He pauses, shrugs, holds up a hand. “Drunk.”

“Ah, fuck,” sighs Henrik, glancing at the door. “He scare you?”

“Loud,” says Jameson.

“At least he’s home.”

Jameson nods. Forgiving. One of a myriad of jumbled traits Henrik’s noticed on him in the five weeks since he came home to them.

He wishes there was nothing to forgive. He wishes they had made a better home for him.

“Hey, pet me,” Jameson insists, sitting up and leaning over him. Henrik pushes him gently back down.

“Hey, what we did say about this word – 'pet?‘”

Jameson simpers wearily, squirming unhappily, but he doesn’t whine at all today. Henrik knows how hard he’s trying to get this all right. He never wanted to be anybody’s dog and he wants to be alright now. Henrik sees it in him, moment to moment, in the moments when the short, barking signs turn into sudden eloquence, when he gets stuck staring out the window and his eyes go distant, when he watches, careful, the way that everybody else speaks and acts and goes about their day, trying to recreate the understanding that once existed in his head – how to be, if not normal, then at least functionally typical. Trying to remember all the rules that come naturally to everybody else.

“I’m sorry,” says Jameson clearly. “No demand. No pet. Would you hold me for a little while, Henrik?”

Henrik’s heart pangs at the carefully selected little sign name – healing. H. H-healing. Henrik. Smooth and sliding. He shivers. Not much of a healer now.

But he can hold him, at least.

He lets Jameson settle down on his chest and wraps his arms around him, rubbing his back through the smooth fabric of his big blue sleep shirt. Jameson sighs, delighted, and puts Marvin’s computer on Henrik’s stomach, hitting play on a video.

Henrik drifts sleepily on his pillow while soft music plays from a demonstration of a man making a big boat sculpture entirely out of chocolate. He feels Jamie pat his stomach eagerly a couple times, when the man does something really clever, like molding a little crest for the head of the ship or getting out the edible spray-paint.

Shouting echoes up from downstairs and Jameson stills.

“You just don’t want to admit there’s something wrong with him – ”

“Don’t you dare say that!”

“Neurologically wrong, Marvin, he needs to see a specialist!”

“He likes the lady he has right now, we are not moving him around anymore! You know how hard it is for him to trust anybody! His brain is fine, Jackie, he’s just traumatized! Why is that so hard for you to grasp?”

Henrik rubs at his face, exhausted.

“How about I will grab you headphones, Jameson?” His voice is a fish croak. He feels sticky purple blood on his chest.

JJ shakes his head, staring at his video. The man is adding an octopus to the top of the ship. A big chocolate octopus. Do octopus eat fish? Henrik can’t remember. Squid do, don’t they? Probably octopuses are just the same.

“This,” says Jameson, pointing at the video. “Want to do this.”

Henrik pauses, glancing between him and the big chocolate octopus. “What – make chocolate?”

Jameson digs his chin into Henrik’s chest, humming airily. “Carve. Carve things. But not… sometimes with Anti we… but I don’t mean like that. I like how someone can take a dead piece of wood or a big, melty slab of chocolate, and then turn it into something so intricate and lovely. Who doesn’t want an octopus sculpture? A chocolate octopus sculpture! Tearing the boat apart like that. No more sailors.”

“I don’t understand why now, of all times, you want to get into this!” Jackie sounds close to tears. No where to land. It’s storming out. “And now poor fucking Schneep is out of a job, and what the hell is he going to do? He loved being a surgeon better than anything and he’s probably upstairs right now hurting, with nobody to comfort him, but you want to get into a fucking fight?”

“You never listen to me unless we’re yelling!” He only says it because he’s afraid. Henrik can hear his deer’s feet retreating away from Jackie. Marvin made timid… who would have thought he’d see the day? “Besides, let’s not pretend you have the first idea how to comfort Henrik anymore!”

“Well, at least I don’t avoid everyone in the whole goddamn house!”

“That is not what’s happening!”

“Oh, please – ”

“Never listen to me at all – ”

“You’re the one who doesn’t ever work with me!”

“Don’t trust me with any of the problems in the house anymore!”

“I’m not the problem here – ”

“Everything is falling apart and you – ”

Something flames like a coal fire in Henrik’s chest. Suddenly he is crying, covering his ears with his hands, wrapping his body tighter around Jameson’s, still rubbing, gentle, at his soft back, clutching his brother to his chest, sobbing on his bed at one in the morning, because nothing is right, and nothing is going to be right, and he’s tired of being alive.

Jameson picks softly at his beard, scratching his fingers through it. Someone is throwing up in the bathroom across the hall.

“Why will nothing get better, Jamie?” His golden, pinprick eyes are weeping salt into the great black ocean around him. He is limp on the waves that throw him around and around in the water, bleeding purple, ill with the motion of it, too tired to keep on, and the worst part is he knows fish are too fucking stupid to get the metaphor of any of it, and there is no less glorious death to be imagined than the dumb staring up at the sun as the corpse floats bloatedly to the surface of the ocean and the seagulls swoop down for a snack. “Why will none of this ever get any better?”

“I’m better,” say Jameson’s scarred white hands. “I’m better.”

Henrik buries his face in his shoulder. He’s so fucking good. What the hell did he do to deserve a friend like this? “Yeah,” he manages, frail as fish bones. “You are.”

Jameson breathes that breathy hum against his head, gone warm and still and patient in his arms. Henrik holds him closer and closer, hiding in his chest, soothed by the feel of the fabric beneath his hands. Just keep rubbing his back. Just keep rubbing his back. Just keep rubbing his back. Soft and steady across his palms. Warm heartbeat beneath his fingers. Maybe Jameson didn’t come in here for his own reassurance. Good dog, better man. He thinks he might be a man again too. He thinks Jameson might be holding him in the water, his head pressed against his shoulder, kicking his legs to keep them both afloat, Henrik limp in his arms as he swims. He sees them both thrown by the waves, wrapped around each other, heads down and close and steady and soaked, brothers in misery, brothers on the ocean waves, while fur and scales fall away.

Jameson draws away from him slowly. Henrik whimpers and Jameson shushes him, clutching his hand for a moment before he darts away, returning just a moment later and pressing cool wood into Henrik’s hands, Henrik’s shaking, tremulous, tormented hands.

“It’s a fish,” Jameson tells him. “I made it for you.”

His fingers encircle the proud round body of the wooden koi. Henrik stills, sniffling, running his hands over it before it ever reaches his eyes.

The thin texture of scales fill the soft whorls of his fingerprints. A delicate curve enters his palms, moving through him, forward through his hands. Little paddles of fins interrupt the sure circle of the body, and the face, short-whiskered, unpainted, is perfectly smooth, perfectly smooth. Jameson presses it against his wrists and holds it up inside his brother’s hands, so Henrik can see the softness of the wide mouth, the wise wide eyes, the calmness of it, the still water of it, the koi fish.

“Mein Gott,” whispers Henrik. “You made this yourself? With your little blade? But how did you know?”

“Know?” asks Jameson. “What did I know?”

Henrik stares between him and the fish. “Nothing,” he murmurs. “Never mind. Hell, Jamie, it’s beautiful, it’s really beautiful. Your hands must be steady.”

No one ever seems to hear him through the water. Sometimes he can’t tell if the things he hears are reaching anyone. He runs his fingers over the indent ears of the fish. The koi can hear him. The koi did hear him. Jameson squeezes his hands.

Jackie and Marvin have, at last, had the good sense to take their argument outside, and the house is still again, leaving only the faint reverb of their braying and crying to slink its way into their home.

“It won’t last long though,” murmurs Henrik. “Always another storm on the horizon. I am no longer strong enough to stand through them.”

Jameson puts his hand on his brother’s heart, just for a moment, and then draws back to speak.

A wild solid thud slams through the air and they both jolt. Henrik grabs Jameson’s shoulders, sitting up, staring at the door.

Chase shrieks, a sob thrashing through it, and bursts into tears on the other side of the door.

“Chase!” cries Henrik, leaping out of bed and darting into the hall. The bathroom glows gold from the cracks beneath the door and his hands are yanking it open with enough force that he busts the shitty press-in lock of the handle in one go.

Chase is wailing at his feet, hot tears coursing down his face, curled in on himself and clutching his head. Blood seeps from beneath his fingers and smears the side of the counter beneath the mirror.

Henrik falls to his knees beside him and grabs his hands away from his skull, sending Chase into writhing, rocking himself back and forth on the floor. His face has drained of all color, except the bright red of his mouth where he bites down on it.

“What happened, what happened?”

“Schneep!” he screams, trying to clutch at his head again. “F-fell, hit my head, hit my head!”

“And hard, too,” murmurs Henrik, taking his chin in his hands and pulling him closer to gaze at the burst of blood at the top of his forehead. “Chase! Why won’t you stop getting so drunk you can’t walk through the bathroom? Fuck, I – I can’t – hell, okay, okay, Jamie, can you get me my first aid kit?”

“Where?”

“Beneath my bed, bottom left corner,” he replies, clipped and sure, stroking his thumb down Chase’s cheek.

“It just hurts!” sobs Chase, rocking himself. Back and forth, back and forth. Swaying on the branches of the trees.

“You really got it at just the wrong angle.”

“Not my head,” chokes Chase, hugging his own shoulders.

Henrik’s eyes sting again. “I know. I know.”

“I can’t do this anymore, Schneep, fuck, I’m sorry, I can’t do this, I can’t go on.”

His hands scrabble for the bottle watching them from the top of the counter. In a sudden burst of fury, Henrik leaves Chase on the floor, gets to his feet, and picks the bottle up in his hand. A heavy square of poison clutched in his palm. He turns his body like a baseball player pitching and flings the bottle at the wall above the bathtub.

The glass glows and glitters as it shatters into the body of the tub, spilling cold gold alcohol all over the floor and the porcelain. Chase draws back and wraps his arms around himself, moaning as Henrik gets back to his knees beside him, breathing hard.

“Have to stop trying to do it alone,” mumbles Henrik, reaching back to get the first aid kit from Jamie.

“Henrik,” signs Jamie softly. “Shaking.”

Spasming might be more accurate. His hands flicker and rock, tremble and sway, shaking so hard he can barely clutch fists.

He shoves at the clasp of the box until it falters open, hands scrambling for butterfly bandages.

“Have to stop trying to do it alone… have to stop trying to do it on your own…”

Clean red blood wells across the ridges of Chase’s fingers. Henrik shudders. He sees knives and open wounds seeping puss and he closes his eyes, panting, trying to get his fingers to pinch the bandages.

Jameson’s scarred hands come down to help him hold them.

They pull Chase’s hands away from his head and unfurl the first bandage. Jameson mops blood away and then moves Henrik’s fingers with his own, pressing the plastic over the small, weeping cut.

Marvin and Jackie are louder through the window of the bathroom.

“Why don’t you act like my friend anymore? I don’t understand what’s happening to you. You feel like you’re a hundred miles above me, and I’m just stuck on the ground.”

“Marvin – I – I never meant to push you away…”

“Ohh, it stings, it stings,” groans Chase, pushing the heels of his palms against his face.

“We’ll get it all closed up,” whispers Henrik, rubbing at his back. “Good doctor’s here.”

Jameson smiles gently at him and helps to undo another bandage. He doesn’t really need his help, Henrik realizes belatedly. They press a second bandaid over the cut to keep it together. Henrik sits back on his heels.

“I know you’re trying to protect us… trying so hard to protect us, to take care of us, but Jackie, I just want… I just want…”

“Fuck, Marvin…”

For long minutes, Henrik rubs Chase’s back and talks to him. Jameson swathes the blood away, rubs stinging disinfectant over the wound, replaces it with butterflies, and, finally, adds a great patch bandage to cover the wound. Chase has gone quiet, holding Henrik’s hand, his eyes closed, his face getting its color back. Jackie and Marvin murmur outside the house.

“Garbage kid,” says Henrik.

Chase’s mouth flickers fondly. “Just a raccoon man, aren’t I, Schneep?”

“Some days,” agrees Henrik. “Not all. Some days you’re just my Chase. Head out of the goddamn dumpster.”

“Think I need to den up for the night,” Chase mumbles. “Or I’ll end up with raccoon circles on my eyes and then we’ll be back at the beginning. Will you… will you help me get up?”

Jameson and Henrik grab his arms, steadying him, and together they haul him to his feet and hold his hands, leading him back towards his bedroom.

“I’m sorry I’m so dumb,” says Chase. “And I’m never what you need me to be.”

“You are what I need you to be,” says Henrik.

And Chase stares up at him like he needs more explanation, but what do you say to that? He doesn’t know how to tell him the truth of it. He believes it about Chase, but not about himself, so how does he speak it out loud, and face the hypocrisy always tearing him apart?

“You don’t have to be anything other than who you are,” says Jameson. “Because I don’t love you because of what you provide. I don’t love you because you saved me, though you did. I don’t love you because you are what I expected you to be or because you do what you promised the world you could. So when you tell me you can no longer take care of me, or you are no longer allowed to look after your children, or your hands can no longer take hearts apart and put them back together, well, I’ll still love you both just fine anyway.”

And there it is, tangible in the air – the wisdom often sleeping behind long months of fear and uncertainty, the intelligence, the way that love is always waiting to speak through his little brother, his warm, clever little brother, the pitbull, the man.

“I love you because love asks only for love in return. And sometimes, even then, it can wait for the day that you’ll know how to love me better.”

Chase reaches up and brushes his thumb over Jameson’s cheek. His little brother tilts his head softly into his palm, closing his eyes, and he trusts him, and Chase’s fingers tremble to be holding that much warmth against their skin.

“I do love you,” says Chase, very low, very true. “So much. And I will, someday, love you better.”

“Better and better with each day that passes,” answers Jameson. “Besides, Henrik will smash all your bottles next time you try to get drunk anyway.”

Chase closes his eyes, laughing, and Henrik slaps Jameson’s shoulder. For a moment, even as he laughs, the pain of everything flashes over Chase’s face, and then it is gone again, and, situated between his brothers, he falls asleep and does not dream, except of a quiet beach, and his white feet digging into the sand of it, watching the tide recede.

Jameson leans over to kiss Henrik’s head and he chuckles, pulling his little brother to his chest, not sure why he’s crying.

“Wrong?” asks Jameson. “Bad, what is?”

“I don’t know,” says Henrik. “Maybe nothing. Just overwhelmed.”

“Time for bed,” Jameson insists, tugging on his sleeve.

Henrik runs his eyes over him, sighing through his nose, his eyebrows raising with a challenge. “Well… what do you think about trying your own bed tonight, huh?”

A blush floods Jameson’s cheeks and he looks away, biting on the nail of his thumb.

“It’s okay if you’re not ready,” Henrik says. “But I’d like to see you try.”

“Can’t do it alone,” says Jameson. “Afraid.”

“I’ll come in there and sleep with you, if you want.”

“Really?”

Henrik nods, a smile curving on his tired mouth.

Jameson plays with his hands. “Just let me get my stuffies and the lightbox.”

“Computer,” laughs Henrik. “It’s a computer.” He signs it.

“Computer,” Jamie signs back exaggeratedly, rolling his eyes, and Henrik beams to see him teasing. But there’s one more storm he has to ride through tonight, cause who else is going to make it all better?

“I’ll just go check on Jackie and Marv,” he says, getting up. “Meet you in your room.”

“Tell 'shhhh,'” says Jameson, ducking towards Chase’s closet for his kitten and finger puppets. “Loud, angry.”

“Not at you, though,” says Henrik softly, pausing in the doorway. “Not at you.”

“Yes,” answers Jameson’s hands. “I know. Not even at each other.”

“Not at each other? Who were they yelling at?”

Jameson shrugs. “Go look,” he says, disappearing behind the door.

Henrik swims down the stairs, feeling his fins trail behind him. He’s a fish. He’s a big ugly fish. Or maybe a nice wooden koi, warm and lovely between Jameson’s hands. But he’s still a fish and the albatross can’t reach him and the deer is hiding in the forest, because that’s the way it’s been for long, long months now.

He opens the door of the house.

Before the roots of the forest dig their way into the dark, steady earth, Marvin kneels in the grass, his head held up, staring at the stars.

Jackie is laid across his lap, pressed to his chest, resting in his arms.

Antlers of deer, when they come out from the trees, make nesting place for birds.

Arms of brothers make spaces for each other.

And Jackie has found a place to land.

Marvin turns, suddenly, alerted to his presence, and today, he does not turn his head away, does not duck his face down, does not retreat to the trees.

“I love you,” he mouths in the light of the moon.

Henrik smiles despite himself, alight with tears.

“I love you too,” he signs back.

“Ready for bed?”

“Almost, H-healing.”

“What are you doing?”

“Finishing my video,” says Jameson happily, reaching out for him, so brothers can sleep on the same piece of driftwood, and one day make it back to land, even if it’s a very different shore from the one they were cast off from.

“Did he finish the octopus?” asks Henrik sleepily, sinking down into the bed beside him. One of Jameson’s stuffies squeaks on the mattress beneath him.

“Yes,” answers Jameson. He closes the lid and lies down beside Henrik, presenting the wooden koi again, putting it on the bed between them and moving it towards their heads like it’s swimming. “And then, when he was done, he squished the arms of the octopus together.”

“Did it crush the boat?”

“It crushed the boat, and it drowned all the sailors. But you know what, I think it’s okay, cause they were pirates, so they probably did bad things to people and locked men up like dogs in the little box – the brig, yeah? Well, now they’re gone, and they can’t hurt anybody, and the ship will go down in chunks, so there’s no one to hurt the fish, and they have places to hide now, when the tide is too strong and they can’t swim anymore, and I bet a whole family of them can stay safe in the remains of what once was.”


End file.
